Cultural Matter presents: Juha van Ingen
Juha van Ingen’s AS Long As Possible (ASLAP) (2017) is a GIF animation consisting of a vast series of numbered black screens that will unfold over a period of 1000 years at approximately one per ten minutes. The series of animation frames, 48 million in all, featuring white numbers on a black background, will never be interrupted and, through its continued perpetuation, it constitutes the ‘ultimate’ or at least most extreme GIF. However, AS Long As Possible also contradicts the experience of a GIF. A GIF animation is a rudimentary graphics animation file format, with a given range of medium-specific properties. Rather than using the gif to show a short looped action, Van Ingen distils the format, showing an extremely slow sequence of numbered black frames that loops after 1000 years. Van Ingen’s materialising of an online concept is closely linked to a core element of Post-Internet Art, translating the very principles and preoccupations of what they found online into sculptural installations. The screen, the main element of As Long As Possible, is sunken into a wall and backlit, thus emphasising its staging. The GIF is transformed into an experience – a place for contemplation. At LIMA, AS Long As Possible will be presented for the first time outside the museum framework. His 1000 year-long GIF has been acquired by KIASMA, Helsinki in 2017 where it will be played until 3017. At LIMA, the travel version of this work will be presented in a solo exhibition.

Juha van Ingen
Juha van Ingen (1963) utilizes various mediums in his works ranging from objects and spaces to moving image and sound. He often deals with processual dismantlement and re-construction replacing one process with another, decoding the contents of the medium he has selected and placing it in a new interpretative framework. Van Ingen's (Dis)integrator (1992) is a contemporary classic of structural video art. Van Ingen lives and works in Helsinki.

Kati Kivinen
Kati Kivinen has been working as Chief Curator for Collections at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma since 2017. Previously, she has worked as Artistic Director of AV-arkki, the Distribution Centre for Finnish Media Art (2009–2010).

Cultural Matter
The presentation of As Long As Possible (2017) is an extension of the Cultural Matter series at LIMA in 2018. In line with this programme the work by Juha van Ingen will be discussed in light of digital art and art historical context and new presentation and preservation strategies during two evening programmes with various speakers.

During the Cultural Matter series in 2017 and 2018, curated by Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte, the following artists have been represented: Nicholas O’Brien, Petra Cortright, Harm van den Dorpel, Constant Dullaart, Olia Lialina, UBERMORGEN.

Publication
Next to the exhibition, the online publication As long as possible was made.
With contributions by Cécile Dazord, Sanneke Huisman, Juha van Ingen, Pontus Kyander, Jan Robert Leegte, Alexandre Michaan, Gaby Wijers and Kari Yli-Annala.